I bought this old cookbook at a thrift shop recently: The Ossoli Club Cook Book. I would like to find out as much as possible about the era and the group who created it. I did a google search and found nothing.

It has absolutely no copyright or publishing information except saying on the first few pages: published by The Ossoli Club.

It is one of the old fabric over cardboard covers and has ads for businesses located in Illinois. The first ad says,

"A Little Home -
A Little Family -
A Little LOVE -
A Few Friends -
- and a
Woods Electric -

Gee! What more can a man or woman want?
The car with the solid tires

Woods Motor Vehicle Co.
2521 Calumet Avenue
blah blah
It pictures an illustration of a family and outside the window, a real old flat top car of some type [I know little about cars]. It looks more like a carriage than a car to me.

The cookbook recipes read like this one for fruit relish:

Grape fruit pulp, bananas, sliced and quartered, mixed with shredded pineapple, using half as much pineapple as either grape fruit or bananas, strawberries cut in halves. Altogether 2 cups of fruit. Pour over fruit 1/3 cup sherry, 3 tablespoons of apricot brandy, 1/2 cup ofsugar and a few grains of salt. Chill thoroughly, and serve in sherbet cups as first course at luncheon.

I'd bet there are really interesting "soiree sandwich" fillings, canapes and even molded salads in there that we haven't seen in "modern" cookbooks for a while! Hmmm...I wonder if they have a date loaf candy like mine?

I'd bet there are really interesting "soiree sandwich" fillings, canapes and even molded salads in there that we haven't seen in "modern" cookbooks for a while! Hmmm...I wonder if they have a date loaf candy like mine?

choclatechef - the info about the Woods Motor Co. ad helps narrow down the age of the cookbook some - well, at least within a 20 year span.

Woods was in business from 1899 to 1919. From 1899-1915 the cars were just electric. From 1916-1919, when they went out of business, they produced a hybrid car (gas and electric).

So, my guess would be that if the ad doesn't mention hybrid or it having a combination of both gas and electric engines, it was probably 1899-1915. If in the ad, maybe in the blah-blah stuff, it does mention hybrid or dual engines, it would have to be 1916-1919.